Mitsutomoe
by wombat
Summary: Kenshin 's last night with Tomoe (well, alive anyway) in the mountain house. Contains angst, symbolic imagery, and creamy lime filling. The story rating is AVERAGED: pt. 1 is G/PG, pt. 2 PG/PG-13, pt. 3 R.
1. A sword dripping blood

Himura Kenshin does not belong to me, dammit, and neither does anything else created   
in/by the manga or anime. All I can claim is these particular words and the way they're   
put together. For additional info (like what's with the title), see the endnotes.  
  
Mitsutomoe  
By wombat  
  
Part 1: A sword dripping blood  
  
Tomoe stumbled forward into Kenshin's arms. Her hair clung to his mouth with the hot   
salt of her tears, like the blood he had spattered across her that rainy night. He could feel   
her heart beating against his, her soft weight warm and alive. Kenshin had never held a   
woman like this before, or been held. Kenshin had never been in a woman's embrace at   
all.  
  
Shinta had, though. Shinta's mother had loved him and cared for him. Sometimes he still   
woke from half-remembered dreams in which her soft-sleeved arm dissolved in his grasp,   
withering away to the stark scabbard in his hands. Even after his parents' death, when he   
was consigned to the slavers, some of the girls had looked after him, cradling him at night   
to keep him warm.  
  
The last women in his arms until now had been Akane, Sakura, and Kasumi. Their   
bandit-butchered bodies had been cold and stiff as he dragged them to the graves he'd   
dug. When he placed the stone markers above them, his hands had still been sticky with   
their blood, leaving behind crude prints like a child's drawing.   
  
Now his world was reeling around him like a spinning top, as fundamentally changed as   
when that unknown, desperate bodyguard had cut his face. His first wound from an   
enemy in earnest, his first proof that he was not invulnerable or immortal. The proof that   
someday, he could die.   
  
Tomoe's pale kimono slid down her shoulders, like her dark hair across his skin. The   
scent of white plum hung all around her, as it had around the girls he'd buried. Before   
Master Hiko had washed it away with his offering of sake, white plum had mingled with   
the reek of blood at their graves.   
  
All of his senses were surging as with oncoming battle, but with no opponent to face,   
only Tomoe. Her touch seemed to cut him as deeply as the bodyguard's sword had, but   
this had nothing to do with death. It was the first proof to him that he was fully alive, that   
life still welcomed and rejoiced in him, that life could still burst from his touch as green   
and hopeful as daikon leaves beneath the rain.   
  
Tomoe still trembled wordlessly in his arms. Slowly, he bent to kiss her, the firelight   
shining crimson through his hair as it fell over them both, like a rain of blood. 


	2. A mirror pearled with mist

Part 2: A mirror pearled with mist   
  
At first, all Tomoe felt was the ragged curtain of Kenshin's hair against her face, his   
mouth hovering barely above hers. When she tipped her head up to close the gap, his kiss   
stayed as soft and weightless as falling petals until she parted her lips beneath his.   
  
As when she'd seen him in battle, his reactions were too fast to comprehend, except in   
aftermath. His arms tightened around her body, his sweet, warm breath drowning her in   
the taste of starlight and snowfall and sunfire. But when her soft moan burst against his   
tongue, he sprang back.   
  
Still dazed, she saw him staring at her with an expression burned into her memory from   
the Kyoto inn, when she startled him from his sleep and he stopped himself only just in   
time from slicing his katana through her throat. His eyes were wide, glazed with golden   
flame, and his voice was the same low, husky growl she remembered. "I'm sorry. I   
promised to protect you. But how can I protect you from myself?"   
  
She reached out in reassurance. "You do not have to."   
  
"But I hurt you. You made a noise--" He did not finish the sentence, but suddenly she   
knew what he meant, for when else in his lonely assassin's life would he have heard   
something like that? A dying breath on a dark street, rippling in a pool of blood. How   
many times must he have heard that sound, like the last echo of thunder struck from the   
lightning of his swords?   
  
And yet for all that bloodshed, he was still so innocent in many ways. He had never asked   
her about her family because it might have hurt her, he'd said. Did he think now that she   
was trying to touch her fiance's ghost through his own flesh? Did he think she couldn't   
love him for himself? She remembered his prickly shyness when Iizuka had tried to joke   
with him about her, back in Kyoto. Had he never known this sort of love at all?   
  
As young as he was, his cheek still had a faint roughness to it, like a cat's tongue against   
her fingertips. The shadow of his pulse beat fast, just below his throat, and when she   
leaned to kiss him there, it leapt up against her lips. Her hair was tumbling down inside   
the loosened overlap of his robe again and she slid her hands in after it, pressing it   
delicately all against his skin in the space above his sash as if she were washing a fine   
silk scarf. His breath heaved faster, her loose handfuls of hair catching against warm nubs   
on his chest as he gasped.   
  
He was sitting upright with feet tucked neatly under him, but not for long. Helplessly, he   
pitched back against his elbows, arching up against the live warm flow of her hands. But   
still he did not reach back up toward her, whether because he was still afraid to hurt her   
or because he needed both arms to keep himself from falling.   
  
Of course, she thought. He sleeps sitting upright in a corner with a sword in his hands.   
For years, he has never lain flat on his back unless an enemy flung him onto it, leaving   
him defenseless. But I am not his enemy. I am not his enemy. I am not.   
  
She eased back, then, slowing her touch until his short, sharp gasps faded away and his   
body no longer seemed tense enough to shatter itself. Slowly, slowly, she drew her hair   
and her hands from his robe and smoothed it back closed again, straightening the edges as   
if dressing a child. Kenshin opened his eyes with a long shudder, still breathing fast. "Oh,   
Tomoe," he whispered. Withdrawing one hand from behind him, he half-collapsed onto   
the other elbow as he reached toward her. He really did look as if he would fall, so she   
moved behind him on her knees and leaned her weight forward, tilting him back over his   
center of balance as she folded him in her arms.   
  
After a time, he brought their joined hands up to his heart, shivering a little at her wrists'   
faint pressure through his robe. It was impossible for Tomoe to guess what he was   
thinking. He had never asked her about her family because it might have caused her pain,   
he'd said, but surely he must have wondered. So, too, had he never asked about how she   
had survived in Kyoto until they met, a "lost cat" stumbling through the streets late at   
night, unsteady with sake and daubed with the disreputable scent of white plum.   
Whatever he might think, it was better than his knowing the truth.   
  
The back of his neck was warm, fringed with loose strands of hair that had escaped his   
topknot, and damp with a faint natural scent like cinnamon and bitter almonds. She laid   
her cheek against it. "Did I hurt you?" she asked.   
  
His grip on her hands tightened. "No."   
  
"Did you think I would?"   
  
Half-turning toward her, he shook his head. "No, of course not. I trust you." He looked as   
wounded by her suggestion as she felt by his answer, which struck deep into her heart.   
But as always, her face remained blank paper, unwritten with the words she might   
have spoken. Her true tongue was a writing brush in her hand, her true voice the whisper   
of flowing ink.   
  
Still, there were things that needed to be said now, here, not set down in secret and folded   
away in a drawer. "Do you really trust me more than you trust yourself?" she asked.   
  
Even as close together as they were, his voice was so low it was difficult to hear him.   
"You know what I can do-- what I nearly did at the inn. This life here with you has   
changed me from what I was, but...."   
  
"Perhaps you can trust my own faith in you," she said. He made no response, only staring   
at her with those wide, flame-glazed eyes. When she drew away, he did not stop her,   
despite the yearning on his face.   
  
She crossed the short distance to the cupboard and unfolded the futon for the night. As   
always, she left enough space from the wall that he could sit asleep against the corner,   
braced upright against his katana. He had never used the pillow she laid out beside hers,   
nor been enveloped by the warmth of the coverlet she shook out.. She felt as if snow were   
falling within her soul: cold, soft flakes of despair drifting and clinging together, burying   
the outlines of whatever might have been.   
  
Kenshin had finally risen from the fireside, moving with an assassin's silent grace to his   
usual corner, where his swords leaned in wait. Instead of immediately taking up the   
katana, he laid both swords down against the wall, but then took up his usual half-   
crouched position, one leg curled beneath him and the other bent upright to rest an elbow   
against the knee. He seemed at a loss, his hands empty and nervous without the katana's   
sheath as he watched her.   
  
Just as she knelt to slip into the coverlet's folds alone, he finally spoke. "Tomoe, I--   
would you sit up with me for a while?"   
  
She would. The wooden boards of the wall were cold against her back, but his body was   
tense and warm at her side. The arm he laid around her shoulders seemed to flicker like a   
flame, unless it was only her own heartbeat making her tremble. She thought of the   
obligation she had accepted to soothe the nightmare his life had become, drowning in all   
the blood he had spilled in hopes of saving others from suffering. A lacquered sheath to   
restrain the wild madness of his sword, a silk umbrella to fend off the bloody rain-- and in   
return, without knowing it, he too had eased her pain.   
  
Once, she had been a happy, laughing child. Her mother's death had been like spring sleet   
that captured plum blossoms in clear, ringing bells, frozen to the heart. Tomoe had never   
been given the time to mourn, only the responsibility of stepping into her mother's place,   
a young girl running her father's household and raising her infant brother. The only tears   
she could allow herself to shed were ground from inkstone and laid down in stylized   
loops, their formal patterns hiding a child's unspoken grief.   
  
Sometimes she had looked outside to see Kiyosato Akira in front of his own house, still   
playing games which she no longer had the luxury of joining. The small gifts he left at   
her doorstep had always made her brother jealous: a polished stone, a flowering branch, a   
rice-cake filled with sweet bean paste. Her engagement to him had brought the shadow of   
happiness back to her life, an echo of carefree childhood too precious for her to endanger   
by speaking of it. Before her brother's birth, she had spent too much time talking with her   
mother about how much less lonely the house would be with two children instead of just   
one. But her silence had driven Akira away to his death, and his last love-letter to her was   
constantly beside her now, the scar his sword had written on Kenshin's face.   
  
And yet Kenshin had become so dear to her, the first man to see her not as a mother or a   
child, but simply as herself. His cold assassin's rage had been nothing at all like Enishi's   
reckless tantrums, or Akira's smiling cheer. And now that the rage was fading from him,   
all that was left beside her was this boy with cool, intense eyes, determined to protect her   
despite herself.   
  
She leaned her head against his body, nestling close inside his embrace. His lips touched   
her forehead, the firelit fringes of his hair shadowing both their faces. His words were a   
flow of warmth through the winter chill. "I don't know what to do," he whispered. "But   
we'll find out together." 


	3. Jewels wept from a flower

Part 3: Jewels wept from a flower  
  
To Kenshin, his body felt as if it were vibrating like a plucked samisen string. But if his   
fingers were trembling as they touched Tomoe's face, she didn't seem to care. Her kiss   
was even sweeter than before, now that he knew not to fear the small, soft sounds she   
made. He tasted them slowly, one at a time, pacing himself with deliberate flicks of his   
tongue across her lips as she pressed closer to him.  
  
He still feared his own reactions, though, and tried to distance himself from them, his   
mind racing with his pulse. Part of him-- a very definite, demanding part of him-- wanted   
to skip the preliminaries and go straight to raw instinct, taking her ruthlessly on the bare   
floor. Some of Kenshin's former comrades in Kyoto had owned various woodcut prints   
which had held little interest to him before, but which seemed suddenly vivid in memory   
now. As he wrestled with these thoughts, strangely his apprenticeship with the sword   
came back to him. Master Hiko had never told him outright where to place his feet or   
how to strike; he had merely expected Kenshin to learn from example by observing fine   
nuances of posture, breath, and tension. Surely the same principles could still apply.   
  
And yet deliberate action could only take him so far. He slammed up hard against those   
limits as Tomoe's hands came up against his chest again, and slid down to the knot in his   
sash. He froze in place. So did she.  
  
Was she blushing? "I'm cold," she murmured. Keeping her gaze demurely averted, she   
tucked herself into his lap and folded his kimono closed again around her. His bare skin   
felt feverish against her, every fine thread in her own kimono seeming to impress its   
texture into him from the warm pressure of her body behind it. Feeling awkwardly   
pinioned by his sleeves, he shrugged his arms out so they, too, could hold her with only   
one layer of cloth between them.  
  
Her neck was bent away from him now, heady with distilled drops of white plum's   
fragrance. It was the most natural thing in the world to brush the nape clear of the dark   
fall of her hair, and press his mouth to it. She gave a little shiver, but not from cold. Not   
unless cold would make her arch up against his hands, so that he had to hold her waist   
firmly back against him to keep from bursting the warm cocoon of his robe around them   
both.  
  
Her waist? Surely he could do better than that, judging by what she'd already shown him.   
He found her robe's neckline by touch, and inside it, the warm curve of her breast, soft   
and yielding as a New Year's mochi cake in his hand-- except at the center, where a firm-   
tipped crest swelled and ripened between his fingertips. Her head tilted back against his   
shoulder, the long pale arc of her throat throbbing in muted gasps, and her whole body   
tensed and flowed against him. Blindly, she reached up to tangle one hand in his hair,   
locking them together in place until her grip tightened to the edge of pain, and then fell   
nervelessly away.  
  
While he waited for her to regain her composure, he tentatively resumed his exploration,   
not wanting to stop learning her body. The fine bones of her shoulder felt fragile against   
his cheek, and his hands slid down the delicate latticework of her ribcage to the even   
more vulnerable softness just below it. He had effortlessly cut men in half at the waist,   
where there was nothing to stop the sweep of his sword but a few flimsy vertebrae. And   
now Tomoe lay draped back against him, her spine pressing lightly into his chest like a   
string of pearls, rounded and priceless. It was more than he deserved.  
  
She was stirring languidly again, her lashes flickering in response to his questioning look,   
with a hint of one of her rare, beautiful smiles. It was time for him to continue. He untied   
her sash entirely, pulling her robe out from between them and spreading it across their   
legs to keep them warm, and she nestled back into his embrace, skin to skin.  
  
So further down, then, to the heart of the mystery. The texture made him think of irises in   
summer bloom, soft petals curling up and around beneath the weight of warm raindrops,   
outlined with pollen-furred velvet. And yet there was something else there as well, almost   
like a plump bumblebee hiding inside, elusive and maddening. As he pursued it,   
mystified, her eyes flew wide open and she twisted wildly, biting her lip to suppress a   
scream.  
  
Horrified, he withdrew his hands at once and hovered them awkwardly away from her,   
afraid even to kiss away the bite-mark from her lips for fear of hurting her more. But she   
caught hold of his shoulder and braced herself against it to complete her turn, pressing   
hard against him face to face, her hands, too, finding out the white-hot places that made   
him cry out helplessly, his back flat against the wall.  
  
By sheer reflex, he fended her off, holding her away until he could catch his breath. "Not   
this way," he pleaded, hardly knowing himself what he meant. Not in the corner where he   
slept, but on her futon by the fireside. Not in his stark world of swords hidden in shadow,   
but hers of bright warmth and comfort, the world he wanted to build and protect for her,   
with her, forever.  
  
She seemed to understand him well enough, her eyes oddly bright as if with tears.   
Gathering up her fallen robe, she wrapped it loosely around her and slipped under the   
futon's coverlet, holding it up for him to join her. After years spent sleeping in a   
swordsman's wary crouch, it felt inexpressibly strange to lie down, fully enveloped in soft   
padding, but not unpleasantly so. So too the strange luxury of Tomoe's softness stretched   
against him, less desperately urgent than before, but still insistent, wanting the same thing   
he wanted. But not yet, he told himself. He still wanted to see and taste everything his   
fingers had told him of her, and if she could bear the delay, then so could he.  
  
As his mouth followed the path he'd chosen, her wordless response was like the first   
echoes of birdsong before dawn, muted individual notes like jade bangles ringing   
together beneath silk. He could see everything now: the tender rosebuds sharp-tipped   
against the night air but blooming against his tongue; the upturned angle of her arm and   
throat as she muffled her cries against her wrist to spare him the distress of hearing them;   
the tidal undulation of her hips against his chest.  
  
A space to breathe, a brief eternity with his head pillowed against her, listening to the   
sound of waves in the seashell whorl of her navel. And then a return to his interrupted   
quest, the hunt for the strange treasure she'd hidden from him: the tongue of a bell, the   
fruit of a houzuki, the seed of a flower....  
  
"Umeboshi," he murmured to himself, surprised. Although less intense, her taste   
reminded him of fresh umeboshi: an initial salt-tart tang that dissolved into lingering   
sweetness, and the round, slippery pit rising firm through the tender dusky-rose flesh,   
ready to be sucked clean.   
  
He would never have believed he'd need all his strength to hold her down, though by this   
time his strength was already divided against itself, half-willing to let her overthrow him   
to be ravished without mercy. And yet somehow he persevered until she stopped   
struggling, collapsing back into the bedding, exhausted and silent. He crawled back up to   
her shoulder, bringing the coverlet with him, and lay on his elbow at her side as her   
flushed, dewy face faded pale again.  
  
Her lids fluttered open again to watch him watching her. "What happens now?" she   
whispered. While he tried to think of an answer, she curled against him, the smooth,   
luscious skin of her inner thigh sliding up and over his legs. He groaned at the silken   
pressure. Had he waited long enough, or too long? Did she still have the strength to go   
on? Did he?  
  
Invisible under the covers, her hands found the heart of the flame, guiding it to the silk   
lantern whose incense was still fresh in his mouth. Further thoughts were impossible, any   
misgivings or concerns lost entirely. Of this part, all he would remember later was rising   
and falling together with her, as closely joined as the beating wings of a crane, burning,   
burning into the night as if aloft in the last golden light of sunset.  
  
  
  
  
  
In the morning, he woke with his head on her pillow. The fragrance of her hair still   
surrounded him, but the house was empty. When he hastily dressed to seek her out, only   
Iizuka stood outside the door, waiting with words cold as falling snow, stark as black ink   
on a white page, all of Kenshin's fleeting joy washing away from him like blood from his   
sword in the rain. 


	4. Endnotes

Endnotes:  
  
A mitsutomoe is a pattern motif that looks vaguely like a whirlpool, a circle divided into   
three (mitsu) comma-shaped drops (tomoe). There's a nice page at   
http://www.mii.kurume-u.ac.jp/~leuers/trinity.htm with pix and a discussion of various   
possible interpretations within Shinto: the unity of the three realms of the gods, the three   
primal elements, and other fundamental sets of three. (Fox, tanuki, and weasel?   
Naaaaah...)  
  
You can see mitsutomoe scattered all over the background in the second episode   
of the first RK OVA, while Kenshin is struggling with his ambivalence about   
you-know-who. In the Imperial treasures of sword, mirror, and jewel, the jewel   
(magatama) is also supposed to be a comma-shaped drop, or a necklace made of   
them. And to increase the polysemy, the etymology of _tomoe_ is apparently   
based on the concept of a sprouting seed, the same shape as a raindrop or a flame.   
  
(Revised note: oops, I mistakenly assumed that the etymology I'd already seen for Sailor   
Saturn's surname would apply to Ms. Yukishiro's personal name as well; see   
http://antares7.prettyodango.net/articles/npf/index2.html for the former. "Our" Tomoe's   
personal name is a completely different kanji which originated as a pictograph of a snake,   
according to zhongwen.com's listing of that single four-stroke character as the Chinese   
_ba_. Much geekery deleted about Japanese legends about Melusine-like serpent brides,   
or women sacrificed as brides to the serpent-god of the local river to prevent floods (the   
bloody rain?).)  
  
So after having had the first chapter spontaneously splat itself into existence as a   
collage of symbolic images from the OVA, I started to think the premise over a   
little more carefully. Elbereth's webpage on the OVA's subtextual themes (   
http://members.fortunecity.com/elbereth1/KenshinOVA2e.html ) was a tremendous   
inspiration from the start. The chapter titles are geeky semantic games based on stuff in   
the above paragraphs. Aside from the fairly obvious shifts in narrative focus, the chapter   
divisions are also based to some extent on the Kenshin/Akira/Tomoe triangle. (Enishi has   
his own manga arc. The kid can take care of himself.)  
  
Some specifics from chapter 3:  
  
Technically, traditional Japanese bells were rung by hitting them from the outside with a   
log, but Western-style bells with internal clappers would've been introduced by this time.   
(Revised note: well, the big freestanding bells needed to be whacked with a stick, but   
there were also clusters of small handheld bells, _suzu_, rather like modern-day jingle   
bells with a round thingy bouncing around inside each one.)  
  
Houzuki is the plant ADV decided to subtitle as "ground-cherry". Weirdos. The more   
usual name for it in English is "lantern plant". Apparently they're common altar   
decorations for the summer Obon festival, when families try to send their ghosts to rest.   
Also, you can blow into the empty pods and make a loud noise. Ahem.  
  
If you've made it all the way here, thank you for reading to the end, and I hope you've   
enjoyed it. A review would be nice, but it's not like I can chase you down and beat one   
out of you ^_^ 


End file.
